I always need this explanation of government benefits. Conservatives constantly lie about who gets help. We, the government of the United States of America, help the least among us. There simply isn’t a large percentage of people taking advantage of the system.

The commercial Christmas ended at Midnight December 25 as retailers switched to Easter candy. Believers, however, have had the rest of the Twelve Days of Christmas to reflect. Christians and non-Christians alike celebrate at the darkest time of the year to remember the light. It’s no wonder then that light plays an integral part of the festivities. We light up our homes, but we should also light up our hearts.

For Christians, Jesus knew service brings light into the world. He entered the world as a servant, not a warrior. Saint Paul tells us “Have this mind among yourselves, which was in Christ Jesus,who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped,but emptied himself, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.And being found in human form he humbled himself and became obedient unto death, even death on a cross.”

Being a light in a world then requires following Christ’s example. Instead of focusing on the cruel and judgmental parts of scripture, Jesus focused on the merciful and kind aspects. When people were hungry, Jesus fed them. When they were strangers, Jesus welcomed them. When they were sick, Jesus healed them. These actions and themes are the Gospel. Kindness and mercy are the Good News.

Jesus faced opposition even from his closest followers. According to the Gospel of Matthew, a multitude, drawn by his compassion, followed Jesus to a remote place. His disciples complained that they could not feed the crowd. Jesus ordered them to give their only food supply to the people. I can just imagine how those disciples felt giving away their last fish and bread. Instead of going hungry, however, all ate well.

This behavior is quite a contrast with the story of the “rich man” who neglects Lazarus. Every day the rich man saw Lazarus outside, full of sores and without food. Lazarus begged for mercy, but the rich man refused to hear the cry of the poor. Did the rich man feel blessed? Did he feel Lazarus deserved his poverty? We don’t know. We do know Lazarus enjoyed God’s mercy, while the rich man suffered his judgment.

It’s all too clear that Christians ought to be a light for their neighbors, especially the least among us and the stranger. We ought to be like the despised Samaritan. In the Gospel of Luke Jesus contrast the Good Samaritan’s behavior with the temple priests. The priests couldn’t even stop to help a brutally beaten man. It was left to a Samaritan, a foreigner, to care for the injuries and pay for his health care. The foreigner was the best neighbor.

This message was not popular. Cruelty and bigotry had a more immediate sense of satisfaction. The political and religious leaders of the day knew it. According to the Gospels, they constantly tried to trick Jesus. One day they brought an adulteress to him, knowing the law required a public stoning. Jesus showed mercy and asked the “person without sin” to cast the first stone. The crowd walked away.

Christmas is about bringing light into a dark world. It’s not about shopping or saying “Merry Christmas.” It’s about letting your light shine. Let it shine for the hungry. Let is shine for the sick. Let it shine for the accused. Our neighbors need mercy and kindness, all of them, not just the ones who look and think like us. Merry Christmas.

Christmas time teaches a lot about our priorities. In my house growing up it was all about the kids. Our families would all gather at my grandmother’s house, later my dad’s, to celebrate. The highlight was the kid’s opening presents. Giving to the “least of these” was the reason for the season. It brought out the best in all of us.

This Christmas, President Trump and the conservative controlled Congress decided to give presents. The American people received a $1.5 trillion deficit increase while wealthiest among us received tax cut. Instead of joy, 9 million children and their families found a lump of coal under the tree as the Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP) died.

CHIP serves uninsured children under age 19 and pregnant women. Until this year it was a bi-partisan program. CHIP had all the features conservatives demand: state run, state flexibility and participant co-pays. It also had some pretty liberal features. The cut off for eligibility was 200% of poverty or $ 48,600 (family of four), opening it to thousands of North Texas families.

In other words, the vast majority of CHIP eligible families have jobs, pay taxes and play by the rules. They simply do not earn enough to afford private insurance. Insurance means the difference between seeking medical care and suffering without.

Suffering is not a Christmas virtue. Suffering keeps kids out of schools and creates a whole host of problems. The ripple effects include more than academic and social losses. Mothers and fathers lose money or jobs when they stay at home to care for a sick child. Healthy children mean low income parents can work and take care of their own families. CHIP is money well spent.

The money doesn’t actually go to the families, however. The money is a job creator. Doctors, dentists, nurses and lab technicians earn a living off these federal and state tax dollars. When small towns lose this money, how many well-paying jobs will also leave? We’ve already seen rural hospitals close in states that refused to expand Medicaid.

Letting CHIP die also seems awfully strange for conservatives who claim to be “Pro-Life.” Texas already has the highest maternal mortality rate in the developed world. Cutting CHIP will make it worse. Prenatal care is an essential part of a healthy life. Early childhood care is an essential feature of a healthy life. Every pregnant woman should have access to health care before and after her child is born. CHIP is Pro-Life.

Cutting funding for CHIP, Medicare, Social Security and public schools is the real “War on Christmas.” Christ came as a child. The Wise men brought gifts, not for Herod, but a babe lying in a manger. Are we a people who bring gifts to Herod or the children? What are your priorities this Christmas?

Tuesday sure was exciting. Doug Jones won a US Senate seat in the “Red State” of Alabama as a Democrat. His opponent, Roy Moore, had the backing of President Donald Trump. Moore also claimed to have the backing of God, but after his loss, I’m not so sure. What could possibly have gone wrong?

Much of the media attention has been focused on accusations of Roy Moore’s taste for young girls. While credible, these accusations were never proven in a court of law, and many Alabama voters refused to believe them. Instead, Moore’s supporters pointed to his conservative values.

What were these values?

Roy Moore was no stranger to politics or the law. Twice Alabama had removed him from the state’s Supreme Court. Moore had refused to obey a Federal Court order. It required him to remove a religious display on government property. His violation of the First Amendment was strange because Moore favored the first ten amendments to the constitution, but he wanted to get rid of all the rest. He blamed America’s current problems on those additional amendments.

Moore’s conservative values then included getting rid of the anti-slavery amendment, the voting rights amendment and the equal rights amendment. I know conservative politicians often talk about rolling back federal regulations, but do we really want to allow the return of the “good old days”? From my professional experience, I can tell you that they weren’t so good for blacks, women or the poor. There wasn’t even a real middle class back then.

These laws radically changed the county, opening up economic and political opportunities for women and other minorities. Do conservatives really believe these laws hurt America? Are we really worse off as a nation because women and minorities now have equal rights?

It shouldn’t surprise anyone then that the majority of Alabama voters refused to support him based on his conservative values. Hopefully, we can all agree, liberal or conservative, that the Federal Government did the right thing by adding these amendments. All men and women are endowed by their creator with certain unalienable rights. Returning to the “Original Intent” of the Constitution is not an option. Liberty and justice is for all of us, nor a chosen few.

The conservative deficit creation strategy is clearer every day. Not long ago we heard conservatives scream that deficits were bad. Now conservatives control the United States House of Representatives, the Senate and Presidency, and they are eagerly creating $1.5 trillion dollars in deficit spending. Why would they do that?

Ryan knows that he can’t blame Medicare and Medicaid for our debt. Instead he says “entitlement.” Wage earners pay for these two popular liberal programs with every paycheck, planning for their retirement. By creating a deficit with tax cuts for millionaires and billionaires, conservatives will turn right around and demand cuts in Medicare and Medicaid. Will they be there for you?

Remember, these are children from working families. These families are doing more than lifting a finger. They are living pay check to pay check and simply can’t avoid health insurance. Hatch gave this excuse the very same week he voted to create $1.5 trillion in new deficits. The strategy is clear. Cut taxes. Create a deficit. Cut services to seniors and children.

You can also look at the deficit creation strategies in Oklahoma and Kansas. Conservatives in both states slashed taxes for wealthy individuals and corporations. They claimed the resulting job creation would bring in new taxes. Public school teachers and nursing homes in both states are suffering because the reality didn’t match the theory.

We know from personal and historical experience that debt is a tool. It provides leverage to lift heavy problems. Personally, we use debt to buy cars and houses. For liberals, governments use it in an emergency to lift the economy and pay debt off once the economy is growing on it’s own. For conservatives, the heavy problem is cutting Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security benefits. Do you support creating $ 1 and $1.5 trillion in new deficits as an excuse to cut your entitlements?

Power demands sacrifices. In aristocratic societies, the elite demand sacrifices from the many. In democratic societies, the many demand sacrifices from the elite. The whirlwind created by charges of sexual harassment and assault are a healthy sign that our democracy continues to grow and mature. We the people must hold elites accountable.

For too long male dominated society blamed female victims of sexual aggression. In Deuteronomy Chapter 22 God commands the Israelites to stone a rape victim if she didn’t “cry out for help though she was in a city.” This ancient form of “slut shamming” lasted well into the modern era. Too often we hear our neighbors blame the “short skirt” or say “she was asking for it.” Society blamed the victim instead of making the man take full responsibility for his crime or abuse.

Thankfully, Modern America is much more democrat than the past. Over the past fifty years women have earned positions of power in government and business. At first, submission to sexual abuse was seen as the price of admission, a form of hazing. Some people have gone as far to say that women seeking power or the spotlight bring abuse upon themselves. These attitudes must be thrown into the dustbin of history.

Like many issues, we know how to solve the problem. Powerful people, however, want to make it complicated to protect themselves and their positions. We can stop the mistreatment and abuse if we listen to the legal experts. They have spent a life time developing guidelines and standards to evaluate and enforce workplace behavior.

Consent, or lack of, is the first criterion. Touching co-workers without their consent or “talking dirty” to them creates a hostile work environment. People in powerful positions, however, have an additional burden. They can create hostility by forcing consent. The most obvious form of misconduct is an exchange of sex for a promotion or a grade, but there is any number of lesser favors required such as always asking the women to get the coffee.

The second criterion is severe misconduct. A severe incident such as rape or grabbing another person’s genitals only needs to happen once. There are no second chances. Physical and verbal assaults are not acceptable.

The third criterion addresses the grey areas and is called pervasive. These behaviors are the little things that add up over a short period of time. Jokes about body size or physical anatomy fall into this category. If a co-worker asks you to stop saying these things, then stop. No means no. None of these criteria take a rocket scientist to figure out. They simply require education.

America is no longer an aristocratic society. Men and women are equal before the law. They are equal in the workplace. They will be together in the workplace, school, movie sets and the halls of Congress. Each and every one of us has a right to a safe environment, free from abuse and harassment. When someone demands sexual sacrifices as a price for inclusion, we must protect the victim, not the powerful.

It’s always a good thing to stop and examine our lives. Thanksgiving reminds us to see all we have instead of what we lack. Many of us get into the bad habit of concentrating on the negative instead of the positive. Today, Modern America provides many reasons to give thanks.

If we take a short trip back in time 100 years ago, we find a world exiting the First World War. Discharged veterans of the war found themselves jobless and with few benefits. Luckily for Americans, overseas competitors in Europe were broken economically and psychologically. This change pushed US manufacturers and finance to the front of the world stage and the job market looked bright in the 1920s.

The optimism hit a brick wall in 1929 when Wall Street crashed, bringing the entire world economy down. As millions lost savings accounts, homes and jobs, President Herbert Hoover resisted calls for government action. He preferred the traditional approach of letting the economy right itself. It did not.

In 1932 Franklin Delano Roosevelt offered voters a New Deal, and they took it. The New Deal brought electricity and roads to city and country side alike. It introduced consumer financial protection with the FDIC and the Securities and Exchange Commission. Seniors gained access to Social Security, and millions of Americans went back to work.

These New Deal successes laid the ground work for Modern America. When troops arrived home after World War Two, they were welcomed with a GI Bill that provided housing and educational assistance. These programs were so successful lifting Americans up, Congress extended the opportunities to everyone with the FHA loans and Pell Grants.

The last key to building Modern America was to fulfill the promise first made by the Founding Fathers: All men are created equal. We all know that that promise left out Africa American slaves and women. For much of our history legal racism and sexism stripped them of their dignity and freedom. With Supreme Court action in 1954 and Congressional action in 1964/65, we began to right these wrongs.

Today, I give thanks that I live in Modern America. Our tax dollars take care of the veterans, seniors, the disabled and unemployed. Public schools and universities strive every day to provide ladders of success for Americans from all walks of life. We may not be a perfect union, but Modern America has done a much better job taking care of the least among us than 19th Century America ever did. For all of these changes that improve our lives, I give thanks.

For myself and many others, the election of Donald marked a new low. Local events bring a New Hope.

Several years ago, a colleague and friend of mine was denied tenure by a previous Southeastern Administration. Her English Department faculty supported her application. Something happened beyond the reach and observation of the faculty, including myself. Rachel presented her case to a jury in Oklahoma and won.

This jury verdict is a BFD. Average Americans, not some “elite,” have the empathy within themselves to recognize that employment is based on merit, not sex, sexual orientation or gender identity.

This criterion should be obvious in Higher Education. Our entire hiring and promotion process is founded on teaching, scholarship and service. Our current President, Sean Burrage, actually added protection for sexual orientation and gender identity to our handbook.

Rachel’s victory with a jury should be a warning that the future belongs to “Liberty and Justice for All.” It is a future in which All means All.

He decided to visualize his data in a series of artful, striking diagrams that beckon both the intellect and the imagination, dispelling sociocultural misconceptions with statistics in a viscerally arresting way — a way “to give, in as systematic and compact a form as possible, the history and present condition of a large group of human beings.”

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About Glenn Melancon

Since the 1980s Washington politicians have urged voters to turn their backs on their neighbors. Glenn firmly believes that this radical ideology has undermined the foundation of our American democracy. In the Preamble, Americans made a promise to each other. It clearly states that “We the people” will work to create a “more perfect Union.” Americans must renew that promise.
My goal is simple. Let's stop demonizing each other. Let's talk about works. We can't do that unless we educate ourselves. From my personal experience, not many people want to. It's easier to call names and throw stones. We can have a brighter tomorrow.